As a crotch-possessing corrective garment for posture correction, for example, there is known the girdle described in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-192903. There, a belt-shaped strong tightening portion which generates a strong tightening force is provided from the sacrum along the direction of muscle fibers of the gluteus maximus, which functions to weaken forward curvature of the lumbar flexure for the main purpose of stabilizing the hip joint. Further, as the girdle used for the purpose of treating lumbago, straightening the spine and the like, there are known the girdles disclosed in, for example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H6-173101, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-8303, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-104369, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-192903.
The girdle disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H6-173101 is attached with belt-shaped pelvis-correcting pieces for tightening the lumbar region in a horizontal direction, and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-8303 discloses a girdle having belt-shaped fixings attached thereto. Furthermore, Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-104369 discloses a girdle in which bands made of a stretchable material are wound around the lumbar region. Specifically, it discloses a girdle for treating lumbago, which has right and left bands that intersect with each other at the back of a wearer's body from the right thigh portion to a left lumbar region and from the left thigh portion to a right lumbar region, wherein the entire pelvis is wrapped by the stretchable bands.
However, in the conventional girdles, the effect of posture correction is small and handling is difficult. For example, regarding the girdles disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H6-173101 and Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. H10-8303, belt-shaped correcting pieces or fixings which are separate from the main body of the garment (or have one end thereof sewn onto the main body) are used, and thus handling is difficult. In the girdle disclosed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2001-104369 as well, stretchable bands which are separate from the main body of the garment are used; thus there is uncomfortable feeling when wearing the garment and handling is not easy. Furthermore, the main objective of these girdles is to treat lumbago, but the effect of improving postural balance is low.
As described above, most of the conventional posture-correction-type garments are mainly stoop-correcting garments for the upper half of the body and lumbago-preventing garments for the lower half of the body, but there have been no attempts to improve the posture of the whole body by acting around the pelvis.
An object of the present invention is to provide a crotch-possessing corrective garment which can improve posture by acting on the pelvis with the same force as the force of muscles around the pelvis, and furthermore is easy to handle and can be worn with no uncomfortable feeling.